


alive and awake, thinking (of you)

by lackingother



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Insomnia, Jason Todd Has Issues, M/M, Trauma, jason todd is not alone, they are there for each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 06:25:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15090944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lackingother/pseuds/lackingother
Summary: The last time he slept through the night, Jason found his mom dead the next morning.After that, he stopped sleeping full nights.-Or, Jason waits for Dick.





	alive and awake, thinking (of you)

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger warning: goes into the insomniac experience.

The last time he slept through the night, Jason found his mom dead the next morning.

After that, he stopped sleeping full nights.

Maybe it was trauma? Maybe it was regret, guilt, conscience. Maybe it was him thinking, _I could have._

Maybe it was punishment.

Maybe it didn’t really matter-

Maybe all he wanted was to see them safe and sound.

Jason tugged the blanket a bit closer, hugging himself a little harder.

The invasive glow of the digital clock drew his eyes, and he stared at the digits _4:23_ wondering if the night would ever be over ( _never_ ).

Jason closed his eyes, an eternity passing across his eyelids, before opening them to frozen time. Still the same. _4:23._ Two seconds less. Seven thousand two hundred more. Seconds felt like forever. How did he make it to 4 am? When will time stop? 

423.

He stared at the numbers, a shred of disbelief appearing along with a strand of faraway annoyance. Both were about as tangible as string, suspended over the hot coals of dread and misery.

He stared, cold a callous fire in his gut, sweat like ghosts on his skin, face frozen in limbo, eyes pried open, refusing to blink in case the numbers do.

4.23.

He felt a sudden hate for 4, 2 and 3; he hated their stillness, their surety, the certainty of their bolded lines and their general representation of the dictatorship of triple digits.

Jason hated how he couldn’t create his own time.

_move. move. Move._

Anxiety entered into his awareness like thin lines--gripping, expanding, cutting dimensions into the room. Prickly like needles, then like phantom limbs, ghost thoughts a compression of air around him, keeping him as still as silence. As if moving the slightest of metric units would lead doom upon him like a unrevenged death. It held him hostage, and, paralyzed, Jason heard himself laugh somewhere, somewhere saying _remember when Joker did this to you, except with a crowbar and a countdown?_

He wanted to choke himself. Or wake up.

A creak, then the soft release of the window opening, disrupted the slow burn of maniacal memories and insanity. The sounds ran parallel to Jason’s body and for a second ( _forever_ ) he thought he was alive, a shudder in the room of silence.

“Jason?”

He turned his head just enough to see blue in his peripheral, moonlight clashing with the dark of Nightwing’s suit. The bird was illuminated at the window, where a half-eaten moon hung suspended in black pollution. Dick was illuminated.

“Jason,” he murmured. Softer this time. The mask ripped off. Blue. Movement. Hints of clarity. “Jason, I’m here.”

He didn’t see any obvious damage but analyzed anyway, for a peace of mind more than anything else, cataloguing the infallible design of kevlar and eventually registering the lack of fatal wounds and fresh blood and friendly demons on Dick Grayson’s advancing body. His name rushed to meet him from a distance of five feet, then three, then one. Motion gradually restored itself to him in the way the world howled from the still opened window, the way his blanket shivered from his shoulders, the way warmth seeped into his cheeks from cradling, calloused hands.

He scraped his eyes up to find Dick’s, the brilliant blue light to Jason’s dark and _the man is alive, breathe breathe, breathe again._

“Little Wing, I’m here, see?” Gentle. A touch at his forehead. A kiss.

Jason heaved, couldn’t tell if he just swallowed air or expelled it but he breathed and it took a full moment for Jason to realize he had been holding his breath for the past minute. He saw the yellow tinted glow of digital numbers behind the blue, but he didn’t know it, not now. Now.

“Dickhead.” Jason murmured. He reached up, traced the warm hand and the cold kevlar. “You’re okay.” He said so in a half-whisper, half-sigh, and maybe on another day he would’ve been angrier at Dick for coming back so late and scaring the shit out of him but Jason was tired. He was tired, and he didn’t care about bats and scars and clowns because the world had done a quadruple somersault back into his life and now Dick Grayson’s stupid acrobatic ass was safe, secure, and here.

Dick caught him when he fell forward, enveloping him with light and color, unmasked face folding into his neck. Jason held on and breathed. The clock read 4:26. Jason was done waiting.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is me trying something different bc my insecurities have been killing me inside. Tell me if it worked.


End file.
